SAW VIII
by Mistress Of The Macabre
Summary: When screenwriter Leigh Whannell is kidnapped by Annie Wilkes, he is given a task; he has to revive a series that he's killed off, and he has to do it just right. Because, if he doesn't, Annie will do things to him that will make him scream and scream...
1. Chapter 1

_Whoa-huh._

_Whoa-huh._

These sounds echoed throughout the haze.

**XxX**

But, sometimes, the sounds- and the pain- faded, and then there was only the haze. He remembered darkness; solid darkness had come before the haze. Did that mean he was making progress? Let there be light, and so on and so forth? Had those sounds even existed in the darkness?

He didn't know the answers to any of these questions. Did it make sense to even ask them? He didn't know the answer to that one, either.

He didn't know what his name was or _where _he was, and he didn't care to know, either. All he _did _know was that the pain was somewhere below the sounds. The pain was east of the sun and south of his ears.

For a length of time that seemed very long (and _was, _because the only things he knew existed were the pain and the stormy haze, and at times the two intermingled, making time creep by seemingly more slowly), those sounds- those _rasping, whooping _sounds- were the only outer reality that he knew. He couldn't move, couldn't think, and, in the pain-soaked haze that filled his subconscious like a summer storm cloud, he wished he was dead. He did not know that he wished it.

As time edged by, he became aware that there were periods- small, by unmistakeably there- of non-pain. These were brief, never lasting long, but they had a certain divine quality to it nevertheless.

And, for the first time since emerging from the blackness which had prolonged the haze, he had a thought which existed from whatever terrible situation he was in. This thought was of huge, jostling crowds, screaming excitedly, waving DVDs with various rotting body parts gracing the covers. There were lights, lots of bright, flashing lights; he remembered these clearly, as though he were reliving the entire experience again. The white light burned through his closed eyelids, and that was good, that was alright, because it was something he was used to- it was something he _remembered. _He and James had stood side-by-side, smiling awkwardly for the seemingly endless line of camera flashers, and then the entire troop who had made the series of movies (What movies? He wondered. What were they called?) all lined up and got their pictures taken together. Then the autographs came. He moved towards the ecstatic crowd, his movements slower in the memory than they had been in real life, because his mind was foggy, and pain-soaked. There were people screaming his name-

_(Whannell. Leigh. Leigh Whannell. Yes, that's it. That's my name, _he thought inside the cloudwhere he now was)

-and asking, no, _begging _for him to sign their books, shirts, DVDs-

This memory circled and circled, rather like a sluggish fly, slowly but surely flying up out of Leigh's reach. He groped frantically for whatever this memory might mean, but, for a very long time, the sounds interrupted, shattering what had been his first (and possibly, _last) _memory since the grey haze.

_Whoa-huhhh…_

_Fayunn…_

_Whoa-huhhh.._

Sometimes the sounds stopped.

Sometimes, he, Leigh, stopped.

His first really clear memory of this, what was happening _right now, _the now outside the haze, was simultaneously terrifying and welcoming. It was of stopping, of being unable to draw in another breath. It was terrifying because he knew that he was going to die. It was welcoming because, while he could take a certain amount of pain, enough was enough, and eventually everyone had to get out of the game sometime.

Then there was suddenly a mouth over his, a mouth that unmistakeably belonged to a woman, despite the hard, spitless lips. This mouth, which had covered Leigh's like a smothering blanket, began to force air into him, down his throat, inflating his lungs. When the mouth pulled back, Leigh could smell his warder for the first time, smelled her on the outrush of air that she had forced into him. It was a dreadful combination of vanilla cookies and chocolate ice-cream and chicken gravy and peanut-butter fudge. It repulsed him, and he hoped that she would not rape him full of air again.

There were more sounds. He could hear someone screaming, "Breathe, goddammit! _Breathe, _Leigh!"

To his despair, the lips clamped down again. The dreadful air was forced down his throat again. Blew down it like the dank suck of wind that follows a subway train, putrid and made of exhaust fumes, the kind that leaves sheets of newspaper and candy wrappers swirling in its wake. The lips were withdrawn, and he tried to not let the air go out through his nostrils, because the smell really was putrid, but he couldn't help it, and oh God, that stink, that fucking STINK.

"_Breathe, goddamn you!" _the unseen voice shrieked, and he tried, he really _tried, _because he didn't want any more of that putrid air forced down his throat, but before he could really get started, her lips were on his once more, as dry and dead as strips of salted leather, and he was raped full of her air again.

When she took her lips away from him this time, he forced her breath out, and whooped in a gigantic breath of his own. Shoved it out. Listening to the rasping, croaky sounds and wondering if they really belonged to him. He waited for his chest to rise up again on its own, but when it didn't, he sucked in another giant gasp of air, and then everything was all right- he was breathing like he had been doing for all his life. He did it quickly and frantically, trying to flush the disgusting smell of her out of him.

Normal air had never tasted so fine.

With that comforting thought, he began to sink back into the haze again, where the flashing cameras and screaming crowds were, but before reality could disappear completely, he heard a low, cheerful mutter from beside him: "Whew! That sure was a close one!"

_Close, but not close enough, _Leigh thought, and fell asleep.

**XxX**

He dreamed of the flashing lights, the screaming crowds. The dream was very vivid, so much so that he felt that he could reach out and actually _feel _the skin of his fans, the smoothness of the cameras which produced so much light. He recognized that he once thought of such events as annoying, but he dove into the dream now with relief. Dreams, memories- they had to be better than the reality of his situation.

When he awoke, bringing him back to the state of semi-consciousness, he was able to make a connection between the flashing lights and his current situation. It seemed to just float into is mind, as though he had known the answer all along. The pain only _appeared _to come and go. Despite sinking into the haze, and the pain being covered, it was always there. He knew that now. When the pain wasn't accompanying him through that thick summer storm-cloud, he was grateful, but he knew now- it was always there, waiting to return. There were two more things Leigh became aware of; one was that the dream was not a dream, but a memory, last year in fact, when he had attended the premier of a movie that ended a particularly popular horror franchise. The other was that the pain was not strictly restricted to the upper half of his body; while there certainly _was _pain there, Leigh found that the pain was actually strongest in his legs.

His shattered legs.

Once he became aware of this second fact, the pain seemed to double. Flaring suddenly and violently, his legs began to scream bloody murder. Leigh tried to scream along with them but found that he could not do so. The best he could manage was a weak moan. His legs felt as though they had been shattered with a sledgehammer- he could feel the bones in his legs, once two perfectly working legs that now felt like the meat of his thighs and calves were now housing hundreds of large splinters, poking at the meat of his legs, sometimes grinding against each other.

It was a long time before he was finally able to break the dried scum of saliva that had glued his lips together. When he had managed to so, he croaked out, "Where am I?" to the large woman who sat by his bed with a DVD in her hands. The name of the movie was simply 'SAW". Leigh recognized it as his own creation with little surprise.

"Sidewinder, Colorado," she said when he was finally able to ask the question. "My name is Annie Wilkes. And I am-"

"I know who you are," Leigh mumbled. He did indeed. "You're my number-one fan."

"Yes," she said, smiling, "That's just what I am."


	2. Chapter 2

Darkness fell again. Then the pain and the haze arrived, too. It was an uneasy, painful combination, and Leigh searched deep within himself for the heavy black cloud of unconsciousness. It was not there.

He moaned slightly.

Then the awareness branched out, and, although the pain in his body was constant, it was sometimes buried underneath what was an uneasy compromise which he supposed was relief. He welcomed those times with open arms. The first real memory; him at the 2010 premier of 'Saw- the Final Chapter', with hundreds, possibly _thousands, _of fans screaming his name, begging for his autograph on some item or another.

The second memory: stopping, being unable to breathe, and being raped back into life by the woman's stinking breath.

The next real memory: her dirty fingers pushing something into his mouth at regular intervals, something like Contac capsules or Ibuprofen tablets, only since there was no water they just sat in his mouth and when they melted there was an incredibly bitter taste that was very much like aspirin. It would have been good to spit that awful taste out, and he certainly would have done so under any other circumstances, but he knew better than to do that, because it was that bitterness that brought the relief in and made the pain seem insignificant, at least for a little while.

These things all came at widely spaced and irregular intervals, but then, as the pain began to recede, slowly but surely, more memories became apparent, until his mind had more or less re-established itself. His name was Leigh Whannell. He was a screenwriter, one who wrote two kinds of films: good ones and blockbusters. He had been engaged to be married once. He was famous for his input for the _Saw _franchise, of which there had been seven films spawned from the pure genius of his own mind. Well, that part wasn't quite true, as he _hadn't _written the original 'Saw' film himself, but to sum up his and James's mindset during that time, 'pure genius' seemed perfectly adequate. Something grotesque had happened to him but he was still alive. That dark-grey cloud of pain and unconsciousness began to disappear, faster and faster.

It would be quite some time before his number-one fan came up with the request of a century, but Leigh understood long before then (he even understood it somewhat now) that he was in a hell of a lot of trouble.

**XxX**

Part of his mind saw her before he actually registered that he was seeing her, and must surely have understood her before he knew he was understanding her- why else would he associate her with such ghastly images? Whenever she came into the room, he thought of images scratched onto tombstones, and doom itself.

The image- no, _idea- _of Annie Wilkes as a stone idol was both queer and bizarrely accurate. She was a huge woman, who, other than her large but rather unwelcoming bosom, seemed to possess no feminine features at all. There was no defined roundness of hip, buttock, or even calf below the endless succession of thick woollen skirts that she wore. He had seen her in jeans only once- she had said that she had been out feeding the animals. Her body was huge but in no way generous. When he saw her, he thought of clots and roadblocks rather than welcoming orifices, as most men would think of large, curvaceous women.

Most of all, she gave out a disturbing sense of _solidity- _as though there was nothing else but Annie Wilkes. During those times when the relief was not present, in his pain-soaked haze, he became convinced that she was nothing but a statue, and that all her features, namely her eyes, were simply painted on. He hated her eyes the most. They seemed to follow him whenever he made the slightest move.

Yes, Annie Wilkes appeared as a statue, a stone idol, if you will. Just like an idol, she radiated out a feeling of deep unease that slowly but surely developed into terror. Like an idol, she took everything, and gave almost nothing in return.

But perhaps that wasn't quite true. She _was _the one who gave him the pills, and he craved them like nothing else. They brought the tide of relief back in, and he craved that relief, short as it may be, from the pain, which seemed to mock him by jabbing at random places on his body, each spot as painful as another. Annie brought him the pills, two every six hours, mainly announcing her appearance as a couple of dirty fingers poking intrusively into his mouth, the capsules ready. He was at first repulsed at the idea, but he soon learned to suck at her fingers- he became convinced that the more aspirin he took, the less pain he would feel. She usually appeared to him dressed in her usual frumpy woollen skirts and cardigans. At night she arrived in a pink fluffy bathrobe, one of his scripts or DVDs tucked under an arm, her face shiny with some sort of cream (probably lanolin), shaking him roughly out of his fuzzy, dream-infested sleep, with the pills and relief nestled snugly in her hand, with the moon riding overhead, appearing to Leigh as a single, penetrating eye.

Then he would take the pills, and everything would be all right again- at least for a little while.

**XxX**

The darkness had not gotten rid of the constant throb that was his shattered legs. He struggled out of his brief, uneasy rest, and he peered down at what used to be his legs, letting out a small cy when he saw the twisted lumps beneath the bedsheet.

But, like it or not, his deformed legs were the least of his problems.

Leigh began to remember what had prolonged the darkness and the nonpain as she began to tell him what had happened to him. This was shortly after (although he had no way of telling how fast time went, but it _felt _like only a short period of time had passed) he had asked her the traditional question- where was he?- and she had told him that he was in the small town of Sidewinder, Colorado. In addition, Annie told him that she had watched all of his movies at least twice, and had seen her _very _favourites, the _Saw _series, at least four, five, maybe even six times. She only wished that the final film, _Saw: The Final Chapter, _would come out for rent in Sidewinder soon. She said that she could hardly believe that her patient was really _that Leigh Whannell, _even after checking the ID in his wallet.

"Where _is _my wallet, anyway?" he asked roughly- his throat still hurt too much to speak well above a whisper.

"I've kept it safe for you, hidden away," she said, and her smile suddenly collapsed into a narrow watchfulness that Leigh didn't like at all- it was like a crevasse, hidden deep underneath the fields of a smiling, lively meadow. "Did you think I'd really _steal _from you?"

"No, no, of course not. It's just that-" _My whole life outside this room and pain is in there. My life before this nightmare._

"Just _what, _Mister Man?" Annie persisted, and Leigh saw with some alarm that the narrow look was growing blacker and blacker. The crevasse was spreading. He could hear the howling, sorrowful wind outside, and he suddenly saw her picking him up like an empty sack, and heaving him in a snowdrift, where he would succumb to the elements and freeze to death. But before that, his shattered legs would have their last say, screaming and pulsing with agony.

"It's…it's just that I've always been told to keep an eye on my wallet," he said, astonished by how easily this lie slipped out. Well…it wasn't entirely a lie. As a child, Leigh had always left assorted items behind, and was being forever scolded by his parents for it. He would have liked to say that this had improved over the years, but he would be lying if he did. "I've always been a thoughtless person, leaving my things behind. I guess I've been told so many times to keep an eye on my things that it's just stuck inside me now. If I offended you, Miss Wilkes, I'm sorry."

She relaxed, and a big smile crossed her face. The crevasse closed. The summer flowers nodded and began to sway cheerfully again. Leigh considered the possibility of pushing his hand through that smile, and quickly shoved that thought away. Behind that smile, there was sure to be nothing but flexible, indestructible blackness. "None taken. Don't you fret, it's in a safe place. Wait- I've got something for you."

She left and returned within two minutes, with a gigantic, steaming bowl of soup. There were vegetables floating in it. He wasn't able to eat much, but he certainly ate more than he thought he was capable of. Annie seemed pleased. It was while he ate that she told him what happened, and he remembered it all when she told him, and he supposed that it was a good thing that he came to know how he had ended up with his legs mangled, but it didn't feel quite real- it was as if she were creating his backstory, like he might do with a character in a script.

Annie had gone into Sidewinder for a few groceries (and to check if _Saw: The Final Chapter _was out on DVD yet, but no such luck)…and this had been almost a week and a half ago now. She had been looking after him for _a week and a half._

"I was actually thinking of you," she said, spooning soup into his mouth, making aeroplane noises, as a mother would do with a stubborn child, "That's what makes it such a remarkable experience, see? I was hoping that _Saw: The Final Chapter _would finally be up for rent at the movie place, but no luck so far."

A storm had been on the way, a hideous snowstorm, she said, but until noon that day, forecasters had confidently predicted that it would bypass Sidewinder completely, and head towards New Mexico.

"That's right," Leigh said, remembering as he said it, "They said it would turn. That's why I went in the first place." He tried to shift his legs. The result was a monstrous bolt of pain, and he whimpered.

"Don't do that, Leigh," she said. "If you get your legs talking, they won't shut up…and I can't give you anymore medication for another two hours. I'm giving you too much as it is."

…_Why aren't I in the hospital, Annie? _He desperately wanted to ask this, but he felt certain that this was a question that Annie did not want asked. Well, not anytime soon, anyway.

"When I got to the feed store, Mr. Roberts told me I had better step on it if I wanted to get back home before the storm hit, and I said-"

"How far away _are _we from Sidewinder, Annie?"

"A ways," she murmured vaguely, looking off towards the window. There was a queer interval of silence, and Leigh was frightened because of what he saw on her face, and that was just it- there was _nothing. _There was simply a crevasse, pure darkness, where nothing grew and everything died. Leigh had once toured a mental asylum with James, when they were carefully nurturing the idea that would soon become the better part of seven horror films- Saw- and he had seen a similar effect on some of the mental patients. The word the doctors had used to describe this state was _catatonia. _Leigh remembered that he and James had briefly considered using this state for the Saw villain 'Jigsaw', but they had dismissed it soon after.

Slowly, Annie's face cleared. Thoughts seemed to trickle back into her. But 'trickle' seemed to be the wrong word. She was…_warming? _Yes; warming up.

Then she began talking, and it was as if it had never happened:

"Then I said to Tony, 'That storm is going south'." She spoke groggily at first, but her words soon warmed up as well, back to her usual cheery brightness. But now Leigh was alert. _Everything _Annie said was a little strange, slightly offbeat. Listening to Annie was like listening to a song being played in the wrong key.

"But he said, 'It changed its mind'."

"'Oh, poop!' I said. 'I better get on my horse and ride.'"

"'I'd stay in town if you can, Miss Wilkes,' he said. 'Now they're saying on the radio that it's gonna be a big one and nobody is prepared.'"

"But of course I had to get back- there's no-one to feed the animals but little old me. The nearest people are the Roydmans, and they're miles from here. Besides, they don't like me very much." She cast a shrewd eye on Leigh as she said this, and when he didn't reply, she tapped the spoon against the bowl in peremptory fashion.

"All done?"

"Yes, I'm full, thanks. It was delicious. Do you…do you have a lot of livestock?"

_Because, if you do, then you must have some help. A hired man, at the very least! _'Help' was the major word here, and he had seen that Annie wore no wedding ring, so a stable-hand was his next best option, in case of…_what? _

"Not very many," she said. "Half a dozen laying hens. A sow. And Leigh and James."

He blinked.

She chuckled hollowly. "You won't think I'm very nice, naming two cows after two brilliant writers such as yourself and Mister Wan, but that's their names, and I meant no disrespect." After a moment's thought, she added: "They're very friendly." The woman wrinkled her nose, and for a moment _became _a cow. She, incredibly, mooed.

Leigh looked at her, wide-eyed.

She didn't notice; she'd gone away again, to some place where he could not know. Her eyes were curiously dark, and held no reflection in them. At last, she gave a faint start and said: "I got about five miles up the road, and then the cockadoodie snow started. I came creeping along, with my lights turned on, and then I saw _your _car-" She stopped, glared at him for a moment. "You didn't have _your _lights on."

"It took me by surprise," he croaked. He didn't mention that he had also been quite drunk at the time.

"I stopped," Annie continued, "And I pulled over, and as soon as I got out, I heard groaning and screaming. That was _you, _Leigh."

She gave him a twisted maternal grin.

For the first time, clearly, the thought surfaced in Leigh Whannel's mind:

_I'm in trouble here. This woman is not right. _


End file.
